A creepy brother-and-sister crime duo, on the lam after a casino heist. A plucky deputy, whose macho sheriff father won’t take her seriously. A ex-con ex-boxer who once took a dive.

“This is kind of like an old movie, don’t you think?” Miss Femme Fatale burbles to Mr. Coulda Been A Contender.

Oh honey, if only.

Instead, what we have here is “Deadfall,” a not particularly original, not particularly awful time-waster of a noir, with Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde trying for “edgy” as the southern-fried criminals, and Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek among the old pros lending support.

It’s actually an excellent cast – Kate Mara shows up as the deputy, and Treat Williams is her sexist dad. (Only Charlie Hunnam, as the prizefighter, is rather less than a prize). But there’s not much for them to do in terms of consistent characters or sharp dialogue.

The film starts off after the heist has already taken place (which certainly saved some production costs) and follows the slightly, semi-incestuous duo north, as they try to make it over the border into Canada.

But then they run into serious car trouble, and brother suggests they split up. Bad idea.
But not as ridiculous an idea as having her pick up the boxer, who is heading home, and her brother trudging through the snow to finally end up a country farmhouse, where the old couple is dutifully awaiting the return of their prodigal son.

Who is – you guessed it – the pugilist.

That’s a pretty wild contrivance, but you might brush it aside if it were the only leap of logic here, or if the characters were compelling. But there’s no reason for the fighter to immediately fall in love with the fleeing criminal, which he does, and hard.

And the criminals themselves are all over the place, following nothing but the needs of the screenwriter – taking turns being calmly sane or dangerously unpredictable, with no other motivation than keeping the plot going.

Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky gets the most out of his wintry Canadian locations, and it’s always good to see veterans like Spacek and Kristofferson doing their usual, economical jobs. Wilde and Mara are fine in their bad-girl, good-girl roles.

But Bana’s supposed Southern accent is not a thing of beauty, and Hunnam brings no darkness or danger to his role as the ex-con.

“Deadfall” isn’t an awful movie, and like many low-budgeters these days it’s made the video-on-demand rounds as well as booked a few theatrical engagements. Both, though, still demand a little too much from an audience, financially. This is the sort of movie best encountered accidentally and for free, caught on basic cable late at night.